Once we accept God’s perspective of sin, we realize that we are totally equal to every other soul on this earth. I can’t afford to look down my nose at the active child molester next door because when I was four years old, I stole a cookie out of the cookie jar after my mother told me not to and then I lied about it. To God, I’m as bad as the molester.
Remember that the real reason people refuse to accept God is pride. They resent not being in control. If they can’t be as powerful as God, then they want to be able to define how God uses His power. Well, this just isn’t an option for us. God is God and He doesn’t pander to us. If we sincerely want to know the truth, He will show it to us. If we really want to be in a right relationship with Him, He will give us however much healing and help we need to be able to sincerely submit to Him. Many Christians make the cardinal error of trying to woo unbelievers in by denying the sovereignty of God. “I don’t know why that terrible thing happened to you, but I know it wasn’t God’s will.” Rubbish. It most certainly WAS God’s will, and encouraging people to deny this is only leading them into delusions. When God trashes people, it’s on purpose. When He disillusions us, it’s on purpose. When He uses Christians to make “Christianity” repulsive to us, it’s on purpose. Instead of trying to shield unbelievers from God’s wildness, we need to put our energy into remembering that He is a lot wiser than we are.
Matthew’s grasp of the Old Testament isn’t all that sharp, and he tends to see Messianic prophecies where none exist, so you can’t just believe him whenever he claims Jesus is fulfilling some ancient promise. But in this case, Matthew is correct: there is a portion of Zechariah 9 that does apply to Jesus. The problem is that the language in that passage is very misleading.
“Rejoice, O people of Zion! Shout in triumph, O people of Jerusalem! Look, your king is coming to you. He is righteous and victorious, yet he is humble, riding on a donkey—riding on a donkey’s colt.
I will remove the battle chariots from Israel and the warhorses from Jerusalem. I will destroy all the weapons used in battle, and your king will bring peace to the nations. His realm will stretch from sea to sea and from the Euphrates River to the ends of the earth.” (Zech. 9:9-10)
Is Jesus really humble? No, He loves to exalt Himself. This donkey stunt is not at all His way of saying “I’m nobody special.” On the contrary, He knows that this passage from Zechariah is considered a Messianic prophecy, and He’s intentionally using it to ignite a bunch of fanfare in which He will be showered with praise, cheers, and applause. It’s highly ironic that while Zechariah 9 paints a picture of a king meekly riding into Jerusalem on a young donkey, Jesus is going to find a way to fulfill the technical actions while turning the whole moment into a glory fest. And what about this bit where Yahweh promises to remove all threats of war from Israel and Jerusalem? Is this really going to happen? Not hardly. And is Jesus going to bring peace to the nations? Not the kind of peace Yahweh is talking about in this passage. Yahweh is describing a king who ends up taking over the whole world and abolishing all war. Now there’s a laugh.
Ever notice how the bad stuff is always black in horror movies? Ever notice how the evil beasts often have red, glowing eyes? Well, is there some rule that says God can’t make critters with red, glowing eyes show up in real life? No, there isn’t, and we need to be ready for these kinds of dramas. The power in a city goes out and suddenly there are black rats with red eyes swarming everywhere in the darkness, viciously attacking people. Such an act combines two elements which we find very disturbing: the spontaneous creation of large masses of critters, and critters acting in atypical ways. We will see God using these two themes over and over again during the end times. Sudden swarms of living things will appear out of nowhere and maliciously attack people. Footage of such events will abound on the internet and, well, it’s going to look like scenes out of a horror movie. Except it won’t be fictional, it will be real, and it will result in a lot of gruesome deaths. As a Christian, how should you respond to these things? And what do you do if you are personally caught in the middle of one of these events? Well, there’s no way to make such events pleasant. After all, when the firstborns were dropping over in Egypt, some degree of heartache was inevitable. But there is a major advantage to understanding that plagues are being controlled, and that the One controlling them is good in Character and acting out of positive motivations.
God is pro-human, and this is an important thing to keep in mind. It’s also important to realize that He is a very purposeful Micromanager. When snakes are raining down from the sky and biting people, your natural reaction is to freak out. But what exactly is it that is spiking that fear? There are couple factors. First, there is the element of spontaneous creation—a boatload of snakes are appearing out of nowhere. Well, yes, God is a Creator of infinite abilities and spontaneous creation is a very simple thing to Him. The second factor that freaks you out is that critters are acting in atypical ways. After all, everyone knows that snakes aren’t supposed to rain down from the sky. Well, frogs aren’t supposed to wander far from sources of water, either, since they depend on moisture to survive. Yet in ancient Egypt, Yahweh made frogs go hopping into homes, ovens, and beds—all of which were dry places. Why? What is going on in that amphibian brain when Mr. Frog keeps trying to hop onto the lap of some screaming, flailing woman? Who knows? God controls everything that He creates. It’s a very simple thing for Him to instantly create millions of frogs that all feel compelled to leave the comfort of the Nile River and go hopping over to where the humans are. It’s a simple thing for Him to suddenly turn hundreds of pet dogs against their owners without warning. One minute, Fluffy the poodle is sitting peacefully by your side, the next minute she’s snarling rabidly and trying to tear out your jugular vein. We are not in control of the created world—God is, and a fabulous way for Him to flaunt His supremacy over all things is to suddenly cause large masses of critters to act in atypical ways.
Today when a tornado devastates some town in Midwest America, how do we explain it? Random chance. Bad luck. An unfortunate coincidence. Do you see the problem? The nation of America is an atheistic nation. Sure we toss out the term “God” now and then, but when it comes to explaining the weather, no one really believes that there is a conscious Being at work behind the scenes. Sometimes we jokingly say “Mother Nature was angry,” but we don’t really think there is some supernatural, feminine force that is invested in which of our towns go down. What we really believe down in our cores is that life is a series of random events. We believe tornadoes are simply by-products of certain kinds of storm systems.
So what do you do when you’ve decided to turn a dead guy into one of your national heroes? Well, consider what the Catholics have done with Mary: they have invented a whole bunch of ridiculous fables about her to make her sound extra awesome. The Jews did the same thing with guys like Moses and Abraham. This business about Michael and Satan fighting over Moses’ corpse is a way of making Moses sound super awesome. He’s so fabulous that the highest ranking angel in Heaven just has to have him. But the notorious king of evil–Satan–wants him, too, and that’s a kind of reverse compliment. Once you understand that New Testament Jews viewed Satan like a kind of demigod who actually ruled over the earth, well, then it’s even more impressive that Satan was paying so much attention to Moses. Whether you’re good or bad, if you’ve got power, then your opinion is considered important. Old Moses had the top ranking officers on both sides of the supernatural realm fighting over him, so obviously that meant he was big stuff.
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Now obsessing over the body is nothing new–the ancient Egyptians and many other ancient cultures showed a lot of concern about burying their earthsuits in good condition. But all of this fussing over the body is based on the very wrong assumption that our bodies continue to matter after we die. When you die, only your soul goes on to the next world. Your physical body decomposes as part of God’s fabulous recycling program and it ceases to exist. When Moses died in real life, his soul went on to a new dimension, and his body became irrelevant. But since Moses was a hero, the Jews couldn’t accept that no one in the supernatural realms cared about his body. Instead, they whipped up a bunch of wild tales like this one that Jude is referring to.
No one wants their great hero to just fade out quietly–heroes are supposed to go out in some dramatic way so we can keep talking about them for generations to come. Just look at what Christians have done to Peter–the man volunteered to be crucified upside down. Of course tales like this are just a bunch of hokum that we invented to make our heroes sound more heroic. But such stories keep the idolatry flowing, because how stellar does Peter sound to go for an upside down cross? Obviously a man’s devotion to God is illustrated by his method of execution, right? Well, no. The manner in which you’re killed really doesn’t have bumpkus to do with your soul’s attitude towards God. Whether you’re crucified right side up, upside down, or sideways, God is going to be judging you by the soul choices you made during your whole life on earth. You don’t get extra points for going out in some ultra agonizing way, just as you don’t get docked points for dying of natural causes. The morbid Christian fixation with gruesome martyr stories only reflects how backwards our priorities are.
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It’s a very neat trick Yahweh did about hiding Moses’ body from the Jews. And when we see what the Jews turned Moses into, we can appreciate why God did this. Just imagine if Moses’ bones were enshrined in some temple somewhere today–no doubt scores of people would be camped at that place praying to the bones, kissing the bones, and worshiping the bones. When you see how modern day Christians fruit out over their “holy relics”–weeping, crying, and praying to fragments of cloth, old bones, and splinters of wood–you can see why Yahweh just wasn’t interested in arming the Jews with a whole corpse that they could deify.
Now when you consider that millions of Jews were present at the time Moses died–and when you consider that those same Jews faithfully carried Joseph’s bones out of Egypt and hauled them around for forty years in the desert just so they could bury him in the Promised Land–it is really quite miraculous that Moses’ corpse was completely lost. The Jews usually made quite a fuss over the remains of their prominent leaders, so how do millions of eye witnesses fail to remember where Moses was buried? This account demonstrates how easy it is for God to cause us to lose track of things that He doesn’t want us to keep holding onto.
Wherever Moses was buried, his corpse is long gone. Since the Jews weren’t practicing the mummification rituals of the Egyptians, God’s natural processes would have made short work of Moses’ corpse. As for Moses’ soul–that was immediately transferred to another dimension after Moses died. How Moses is doing with God today is something only he and God know about. We certainly don’t want to view him as some kind of standard that we can only hope to live up to. Instead, we should set our sights on doing far better than Moses did by making our own submission to God a lot deeper than Moses’ was. And as for Jude and his silly tales of angelic beings fighting over a corpse, well, what can we say? It’s Jude. It’s the Bible. Don’t expect perfection.
The atheist looks up at the stars and says “random chance.” The Christian looks up at the same stars and says “the work of God.” The Muslim looks up and says “the work of Allah.” As an outside observer, these three look the same to you. But the soul experience of these three is radically different. Because the atheist and the Muslim are convinced that their fantasies are real, they will sound every bit as confident as the Christian when they defend their beliefs. Soul realities simply can’t be conveyed through words. The crazy man’s delusions are real to him, yet they aren’t real to anyone else. Allah is “real” to Muslims, but he isn’t real in actuality. Yahweh, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are the only Gods who are truly real–real regardless of who does or doesn’t believe in Them. You want to find the real Gods, not just buy into delusions. So how do you do this? And how do you have faith when you are not even consciously aware of your soul as a separate entity from your physical body? It’s very simple. Ask God to help you find Him and to know beyond all doubt who He is and what He wants from you.
Your relationship with God is an extremely personal thing. Your soul’s communication with Him is as intimate and private as a man and wife cuddling each other in bed. In the Bible, God constantly likened worship and prayer to sex. He said His followers were like His wife and He was the possessive Husband who got super ticked when His wife starting doing it with other gods. In the Old Testament, most of God’s chosen people were heavy into idol worship. God took major offense at this. He called it adulterous betrayal and He put out some very crude descriptions of how He viewed souls praying to supernatural beings other than Him.
“At every street corner you built your lofty shrines and made your beauty abominable, spreading your legs to everyone who passed by with increasing promiscuity.” (Eze. 16:25)
To describe a woman as “spreading her legs” is a very crude way of saying she’s having sex with a man. Why is God being so crude here? Because He’s extremely upset about His people praying to other gods. What you do with your soul is extremely important to God. He is very jealous and possessive over you. He says that all of your spiritual “sex”—all of your soul worship and prayers—belong to Him alone. This is why it’s so important that we don’t go praying to Mary, saints, angels, dead people, planets, or anything else. Whenever your soul is reaching out to anyone or anything other than God, God says it’s like you’re having sex with that thing–it’s like you’re committing adultery and cheating on your real Husband.
God assesses the action of killing someone based on the heart intentions of the murderer. He says there are times when it is appropriate to kill. Many times in the Old Testament, we find Yahweh commanding people to kill others. Anytime God gives the order to kill, we are not going to be in trouble with Him for attempting to kill someone–instead, we get in trouble with God for not killing, because that means we are intentionally disobeying Him. A good example here is when the Jews refused to kill all of the original inhabitants of the Promised Land.
So how do you know if God is telling you to kill someone? Step one is to make sure you are personally in alignment with Him. Step two is to wait for His clear instruction. Regardless of what your current communication with God is like, He knows how to make His orders very clear to you, and you can’t possibly justify murdering someone until you receive such orders. In real life, people rarely seek God sincerely in cases of premeditated murder. Instead, they do what they want to do for carnal reasons, then later try to justify it by saying, “God told me” when they know He really didn’t. Another popular game to play is to use God as an excuse to justify killing people you don’t like just to satisfy your own hate issues or because you want to get your greedy hands on their property and land. When you hear people talking about holy war, there’s usually nothing holy about it. If the real God is even being referred to, it’s highly doubtful He’s being sincerely sought. You need to look at the bigger picture. Clearly any Muslim who is trying to claim that god is telling them to kill is lying because Muslims worship Allah, who isn’t even real. If a follower of Judaism tries to use the holy war excuse, you also know there’s a problem, because it’s impossible to be in alignment with Yahweh while you’re clinging to a religion which rejects His New Covenant and the Divinity of Christ.
Every National Day of Prayer, it’s the same old dribble: “God, bless America–You know, that same country that is banning prayers to You and spitting in Your face 24/7. Heal our land because we’re suddenly so repentant and concerned about treating You with respect–can’t You tell by the way we’re all droning the same words at You and treating You like You’re some kind of blind idiot?” Who are we kidding? The Church has turned the National Day of Prayer into a national day of treating God like He’s a moron. It’s time to wake up and realize that you can’t do someone else’s repenting for them. Stop insulting God by trying to tell Him about what is going on in other people’s hearts because the truth is that you don’t know what you’re talking about. God knows how America feels about Him, and our constant lying and whitewashing isn’t going to blind Him to the reality that most Americans are steeped in spiritual rebellion with no interest in repenting. No, we’re really not sorry. We’re too busy legalizing sin and celebrating irreverence to be sorry. Even God’s own people are insulting Him 24/7 by constantly bossing Him around and never shutting up long enough to listen to what He has to say. No, He’s really not going to bless America. He is going to spank America, along with the Christians who live in it. The Church desperately needs a refresher course on what it means to revere God. The next major wave of spiritual activity we’re going to see in this country is not going to be some happy Jesus movement. It’s going to be a violent storm of Divine discipline which is going to remind us all that we are not God’s supervisors.
The next time some idiot leader in the Church invites you to join them in reading some irreverent pile of hypocritical guff at God, you’d better pass. And if you need some national holiday to remind you to talk to your Makers, then there’s a serious crisis that needs to be addressed. Ask the Holy Spirit to teach you how to be a better listener so that you won’t keep missing the things that God is sharing with you. Ask Him to teach you how to improve the way you talk to your Gods. It starts with getting the focus off of yourself and asking Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit to make Their goals, Their feelings, and Their desires far more important to you than your own.
Every day we each make countless decisions. We don’t naturally think of God being involved when we’re cooking dinner or buying groceries, yet He is very clear that He’s right there beside us. As Christians, the Holy Spirit dwells within us. We don’t want to drag Him through our daily lives like some inanimate piece of luggage. We want to treat Him like the living, feeling, Being that He is. And while He is certainly our Friend, He is also our King, not our peer. This means that instead of inviting Him to participate in the lives we are leading, we want to get to the point of realizing that we are the followers, and He is the Leader. After all, these are not “our” lives at all, but His. We are quite literally His property. By rights, He should be bossing us about on every little detail–from what hairbrush we use in the morning to where we set our shoes at night. The fact that God does not choose to verbally direct our every move does not mean He is content with only being thought of a few times a day, if that. While He gives us a large measure of creative freedom, He wants us to choose to involve Him in every detail of how we spend that freedom. God is not interested in audibly commanding our every breath. He doesn’t want to be viewed as some domineering tyrant but He does want us to realize that living life without Him simply isn’t worth it. He wants us to look to Him for wisdom and guidance in all the little details because we realize He is infinitely smarter than we are. He wants us to check with Him on every detail because we want to please Him with everything that we do. If we truly are living for Him, as many of us claim to be, then it is quite logical that we should be checking our every move with Him. We should always have one ear listening for His Voice to whisper some course correction. We should find His input a delight, not a burden. We should rush to adjust our plans to match His preferences whenever the two fall out of sync.
Why can atheists say anything they want about Christians and their God and receive no backlash in the western world? Why do they hide behind the one half of the First Amendment while bashing those who practice the other half? Why do they never protest in front of a synagogue? I rarely see them traveling to Muslim countries, insulting Allah and debating evolution and moral truths. Does “turning the other cheek” make us punching bags for the non-Christian?
In these situations, it helps to step back and take in the whole picture. People who mock God’s existence are being led by Satan. Satan tries to keep unity within his own groups, which is why you’ll find some pretty impressive tolerance happening for cults like Islam in America while Christianity is being aggressively attacked. You can put a Buddha in your workplace, but not a cross. Yes, we’re being singled out for extra aggression, but with good reason: we are the only ones siding with truth. Our God is the real God–everyone else is believing in lies.
Now even though Satan tries not to attack his own, he can’t resist having fun with his human pawns. You’ll notice that the IS terrorists aren’t just killing Christians. They’re murdering the followers of any faith that they don’t approve of–even those who subscribe to a form of Islam that is less extreme than their own. So being of a different faith doesn’t guarantee you won’t be persecuted. If we think different skin colors and ethnicities are sufficient reasons to kill people, we’ll gladly use religious differences as well. Satan wants people dead and in Hell–if he can get his followers to murder each other, it feels like a victory from his perspective. Of course the Holy Spirit is calling all souls and giving everyone a chance to repent and be saved. But most will rebel–this has been true since the beginning and will remain true until the end.
Now atheists are just, well, pathetic. Most people would rather invent a phony deity instead of trying to argue that there is none. Evolution is the atheist’s attempt to explain how things could have come into being without a Creator and of course it makes no sense at all. But any belief which tries to promise an escape from moral accountability to God will always have some degree of popularity on this earth (see Evolution).
Now God says that it is wrong for a man to marry a man. Why? Because it is a violation of His moral code and a celebration of sexual activities which He says are wrong. Once God has educated us on His standards in this area, we can hardly agree to marry gay couples without being guilty of spiritual rebellion. God has told us not to do something, and we’re doing it anyway–that’s what rebellion is. And we’re not just doing it in our own homes, we’re doing it out in public and modeling for the flock that this is the right way to treat God. That’s called bad leadership, and Christian leaders who are intentionally encouraging their flocks to disrespect God are going to have to deal with some very unpleasant discipline.
Why is the gay issue so hot right now? Because it’s one of the better known moral stands that God has. By pressuring Christians to publicly disrespect God by celebrating something which they know He hates, spiritual rebels try to get us to turn away from God in our own lives. We need to remember that life is about God, and everything that happens to us in this world has some spiritual agenda behind it. It’s hardly an accident that of all the religions in the world, America is fixated on stomping out Christianity. By the time people get furious about God being honored, they usually have a pretty good idea of who the real Gods are, thus we find them spending more time attacking Christianity than other religions. In America, it’s perfectly acceptable to park your statue of Buddha in the workplace, but if you hang up a cross, everyone goes spastic. If we post pictures of Hindu gods, that’s good art, but if we post pictures of Jesus, that’s an infringement on everyone’s rights. Of course it’s totally acceptable to mock Jesus in public by displaying irreverent artwork in a museum or putting on Broadway productions which utterly slander His Person. But if we put out a Nativity scene that honors Him, or if we say “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays,” well, that’s enough for a lawsuit. So we all know what the game is: the world hates God and she wants us to publicly side with her against Him. It’s been like this from the beginning, which is why Jesus was so clear that we’d have to choose between pleasing Him and pleasing people.
Now that Yahweh has made it clear that He intentionally lied for centuries about how many Gods there are, the New Covenant becomes extremely threatening to all humans everywhere. The number of Gods is no longer the main issue–today we resent the idea of having to submit to Gods who would intentionally deceive us. Yahweh has come up with a brilliant way of making submission to Him a costly affair no matter what culture we grow up in. It shouldn’t matter to us if there is one God or ten–what matters is that we are connecting with the real Gods and not putting our faith in deceptions. Yet today Christians resist the idea of multiple Gods because they resent the idea of our Gods not being forthcoming with us. Our pride hates the idea of our Gods living above Their own Laws. They say that lying is a sin for us, yet when They lie to us, They say it’s just fine. In the same way, if we take a life, They say we have committed the sin of murder, but if They kill us, that’s just fine. This is how it works when you are dealing with three All-Powerful Gods. They are accountable to no one while we are accountable to Them. There are no rules which They have to abide by. There is absolutely no way that we can restrain or control Them. What we can know for certain is that They are withholding a ton of information from us even now about how things really work. They have no intention of telling us the complete truth about all the things They are up to as Creators. We will only ever know what They want us to know. We are not in control of this situation–They are. It’s Their game, Their rules. They will run Their game anyway that They want, and if we don’t keep up, we’ll be the ones suffering terrible consequences.
Evolution promises total freedom from all moral accountability. WOW. Try to step out of your regenerated mindset for a moment and ponder that concept. This is an incredible offer. How can any carnal soul resist such a cherry? If I’m just here as one insignificant link in the long chain of man’s genetic progression, I can do whatever I want. Evolution says my real value lies is my genes, and I didn’t pick them. Maybe I’m one of the fittest, maybe I’m one of the weakest, but whatever I am, I’M NOT RESPONSIBLE. The link who birthed me gets the blame for anything I’m not. When I die, no one will miss me. Evolution teaches that my greatest contribution is passing on my genes to the next generation. Terrific–bring on the promiscuity! The more partners I sleep with, the better, especially if I’m considered the cream of the crop in physical looks or intelligence. Can’t call me out for being immoral because there are no morals—there’s only the glorious gene pool and it doesn’t care what I do.
Evolution says there is no God. WOW. No God means no one to answer to when this life is over. I’ll just die, decompose, and be forgotten. With the threat of eternal consequences gone, all I have to do is try and escape consequences in this life. Bring on the cheating, lying, and manipulating. There are no rules, anything goes. It’s all about me and I don’t have to care about anyone else.
Evolution gives me a license to kill. SCORE. Because I never really liked my parents and I resent having to take care of them now that they’re turning senile. Bring on the euthanasia—let’s clear out the genetic clutter! The animal kingdom has shown us the way: picking off the weak, the elderly and the sick. Bad genes need to be eliminated from the pool so the good ones can dominate. Natural selection is the best—I can select away my unborn child and abort her into oblivion. I don’t have to feel bad, she was just a mass of cells.
Evolution justifies the worship of animals. GOOD. Because animals are way easier to relate to than humans. I can project whatever I want to onto my dog and he can’t talk back. Bring on the risk-free relating! Thanks to Evolution, I’m not weird if I obsess over primates and spend my life trying to bond with a lower species, I’m just appreciating our past. If I find within myself a need to worship something, the chimps will do well. After all, they are just one link away. If I want a family without having to commit, I’ll buy a dog and call him my kid. There’s no real point in investing in people when they’re just a mass of cells. All that matters is that I enjoy myself during my brief life on this earth.
Evolution says I’m in control. SCORE. I always knew we humans were geniuses. Look at the way we pulled ourselves out of the slime and strained our way into humanoids. Next up: an alien species who conquer the universe. There’s nothing we can’t accomplish if we put our minds to it. We are so impressive. We have every right to boast. Pride is a beautiful thing.
Evolution is not about science, it’s about escaping God. It’s about being free to do whatever we want, whenever we want, without having to deal with any consequences. Evolution puts us totally in control. We Christians need to realize what glorious promises this theory offers before we get caught in circular arguments about technical facts. When talking to an evolutionist, you need to focus on the theory that we can escape moral accountability, not argue about apes. When you cut to the bottom line, you’ll quickly find out whether a soul is open or closed to Truth. If they’re open, you can explain to them that we don’t get to define truth, nor can we escape dealing with God by simply pretending He doesn’t exist. It’s glorious news to find out that you aren’t just a product of slime, but an eternal soul who was fearfully and wonderfully made by a loving Creator.
As we said before, gaining knowledge about God is a whole different deal than learning about other humans. In this world, knowledge is a commodity that we buy and sell. It’s ammunition that we use to gain power for ourselves and trash others. But because knowledge is so readily accessible, we’ve learned to treat it as a cheap and common thing. We’re used to feeling entitled to it, and we’re used to flaunting it like gaudy jewelry just to draw attention to ourselves.
Consider how often you see people broadcasting intimate facts about someone else just to draw attention to themselves. Gossip rags delight in posting pictures of celebrities sobbing or making out just so the rags will sell more copies. With the introduction of forums like Facebook and Twitter, we’ve seen the value of private information drop even lower. It used to be that couples went on their honeymoons to get away from others and share secret, intimate moments in the bedroom. Now people bring their phones with them and take pornographic photos of themselves making out with their spouses. Pregnant mothers post pictures of themselves in the nude just before giving birth so we can all see the size of their stomachs. When loved ones are ill, we photograph them sitting in hospital beds and invite the whole world to gawk at them. People can’t share secrets or sincere compliments anymore without some concern that what they said will end up pasted on the internet. “My husband said the sweetest thing to me in bed the other day.” Really? Since when are bedroom conversations supposed to be broadcast to the whole world? Did you even bother to ask for your friend’s permission before you repeated what she said to you to an audience of strangers?
Now in the Church, we find a similarly nauseating show of people broadcasting their personal conversations with God just as a means to draw attention to themselves. Pompous prophets crank out the books and blogs in which they give us all a blow-by-blow description of the night Jesus materialized in their bedroom and told them how impressed He was with them. Many fat-headed pastors just can’t wait to get onstage Sunday morning and tell us all about the conversation they had with God at breakfast. Prayer warriors are always going on about who said what in the prayer closet. Healers are known for flaunting the secret insights they claim God has given them. Christian musicians turn their personal prayers to God into songs for us all to sing. And then there are all of the untitled masses who are always competing with each other to come up with the best “God said something to me” story. It’s really quite repulsive, the way we’re treating our personal exchanges with God so cheaply. And as long as we’re only interested in God talking so that we can have new material to boast about, we can be sure that He’s never going to invite us to really know Him.
God doesn’t view Himself as our toy. He doesn’t share information with us to entertain us or to help us exalt ourselves in this world. To know God is a priceless privilege, not a right. When we reject this, He begins taking back any knowledge that He shared with us and we drift into ignorance without even realizing what’s happening.
When you’re attempting to relate to the Beings who made you, you are relating to three Beings who consider Themselves to be the most magnificent, fascinating, and desirable Beings in existence. To say that They are “egotistical” is a major understatement. There is no limit to how highly our Gods think of Themselves, and understanding this about Them is critical for anyone who wants to approach Them correctly. We are not dealing with our equals–we are dealing with Beings who infinitely outrank us, and who say that we ought to consider ourselves humbly honored by any invitation to know Them better.
In mainstream Christianity, you simply aren’t going to be taught to treat your Gods with the level of respect that They want. The purpose of our site is to help souls understand what cherishing, honoring, and respecting God means. Cultivating the four soul attitudes that we’re always talking about is vital to you approaching your Creators in a way that They will be receptive to. As we often say, our Gods delight in sharing insights about Themselves with souls who are treasuring Them above all else. But learning about God requires a very different approach than learning about people. With God, we ask our questions, but then we must learn to respectfully wait for Him to bring us answers in His own time. We can’t take an entitled attitude with Him, for there are going to be many questions that He refuses to answer. If we cherish any insights He is willing to share and if we treat those things as the sacred treasures that they are, then He will be pleased to share more with us. But if we treat the knowledge of God as a cheap, expendable thing which we can use to promote ourselves–or if we try to find ways to go around God and unearth secrets about Him without His help, then we will learn the hard way just how foolish it is for specks like us to scoff at the concept of treating our Creators with respect.
[Note: this is her response to someone asking her for help with their depression, which was caused by witnessing a close friend get raped]
God has intentionally blasted you with a very disturbing sequence of events–events which He says are wise and good. Your friend didn’t get raped by accident. He coordinated the whole thing. Why? Because He loves your friend a whole lot more than you do, and He is intentionally throwing her life into turmoil to motivate her to get into her own theological crisis and submit to Him. You see all of this, and it raises up serious doubts about God’s goodness. Fine. But now the challenge for you is this: you’re a powerless speck. He’s God Almighty. He can rip lives apart and you can do nothing to stop Him. He can turn your depression on and off like water from a faucet, so how much are you going to let your approval of Him weigh in on your decision to submit to Him? Saying, “I don’t get what You just did, God. It seems horrible and cruel and it makes me worry that You’re some kind of Ogre,” is honest, and honesty is critical. But reverence will then add, “However, I also recognize that You are God and I am a powerless speck who depends on You for everything. I don’t like what You’re doing, but how stupid would I have to be to defy Your Authority? I can’t escape Your domination–You’re God. Help me to be what You want, because there is no other option.” This is how reverence drives us to submission, and submission then leads to revelations about God’s goodness. But it starts with reverence, and reverence is a fearful respect for God’s awesome power. For you, there are many important lessons to learn in all of this.
Now it’s not fair to label all science as anti-God religion–science has been turned into that today, but true science is merely the search for knowledge, and there’s no reason God has to be written out of the equation. So if we were doing science right–meaning that we weren’t going into it utterly closed to certain concepts while claiming to be so open minded–then science and creationism would get along just fine. But the reality is that trying to study the world around us isn’t the real issue at hand. We like to bicker about the origins of this universe and pretend we’re all in some noble search for truth, but in reality what we’re really trying to do is find some way to prove that God can’t be real. We want to get out of being accountable to and controlled by a Being who we can’t control–that’s the real issue. It has nothing to do with understanding where human life came from. At the end of the day, who even cares whether your ancestors emerged from slime or not? The far more important issue is why are you here now and is there any other Being in existence who is controlling your existence? Are you really an autonomous being or are you being manipulated by Someone else? Is death really the end of you or is there some other chapter that you ought to be preparing for? Discussing the present is far more useful than endless debates about origins.
Here’s a reality about growing closer to the Lord: He tends to have a negative effect on your social life. He’s jealous, possessive, and a wellspring of strange commands. Everyone else thinks it’s a great idea to go on a prayer walk through the neighborhood, and you’re the only one hearing God telling you to stop telling Him what to do in other people’s lives. Everyone else is helping out with VBS and God is telling you not to get involved. It’s not like He’s giving you some other holy activity to engage in that you can tell everyone about–He’s just telling you that He’s the Boss, and you’re to follow His orders. Stick close to God and it’s only a matter of time until He makes you look like a self-centered stick in the muck to everyone else.
Now because your earthsuit acts so alive and cognizant, it’s hard to keep a grip on the fact that it’s just a machine with no eternal future. Most Christians do not realize that their earthsuits and their souls are two entirely separate things, and this leads to all sorts of discernment problems. We need to learn to think more like a pilot in a plane who knows the difference between flying the plane himself and turning on the autopilot program. When the autopilot program is on, the pilot can take his hands off of the controls. The controls will still move, but the pilot won’t be the one moving them. In the same way, your earthsuit is constantly doing things which your soul has no control over. Your earthsuit has a long list of autopilot programs which it is constantly running. It has one for breathing, one for digesting, one for circulation, one for your immune system–the list goes on and on. Suppose your earthsuit is sitting in a chair. Your soul is like the pilot inside the suit. Your soul decides it wants your earthsuit to get up and walk across the room. There is no panel of controls inside your suit that your soul can grab on to. The most your soul can do is send a command to your brain. Your brain runs your suit. Your soul tells your brain “Get up and walk across the room.” Your brain then sets a whole series of complex programs into motion. You see, walking is a very complex activity for an earthsuit. Taking a single step requires the precise coordination of many muscles and ligaments. The nerves on the soles of your feet report information to your brain which it uses to keep your body balanced in an upright position. Your eyes, ears, and nose keep on the lookout for obstacles in your path. Your soul doesn’t have the first clue about how your earthsuit actually functions—all of that wisdom is stored away in that miraculous supercomputer which we call your brain.
Most of what your earthsuit does in life, it does on its own without any input from your soul. When you sleep, your brain is running all kinds of maintenance programs which your soul has no say in. As far as your brain is concerned, your soul is pretty useless when it comes to managing your earthsuit. Your soul makes some really stupid choices, like steering your suit too close to a heat source or making unreasonable demands on the system. Your brain’s top priority is protecting and pleasing your earthsuit. It doesn’t care about what’s good for your soul and it doesn’t care about God. Your brain and your soul get in frequent conflicts with each other because they are working on conflicting agendas.
God is pro-spanking. That’s why He designed us with extra padding on our rear ends–it gives us a perfect spot to inflict pain without doing physical damage. Every human being is born screaming to get their way. It is the responsibility of parents to teach their children self-control and consideration for others–lessons which God says are best taught by painful discipline. As always, in our Satan-led culture, everything God promotes has been twisted into the opposite of what it is. Spanking in America has become a synonym for abuse. Parents are taught to replace biblical disciplinary methods for counting to a million, banning their children to “time outs” in rooms stuffed with toys, and trying to act like a buddy instead of an authority figure. We can choose to ignore God’s principles, but we will still be judged by them. God says that parents who disregard His advice on discipline HATE their children. Strong language, but when God speaks, we know it is true.
[From "You Love God But You Hate People: Why You’re Not a Spiritual Failure"]
Can you be a devoted Christian who is greatly pleasing God if you currently loathe other humans? The modern Church, the apostle Paul, and the apostle John would all say no. God would say yes. Now let’s explain.
God has always taught that He is to be our First Priority—so much so that we should be willing to lose our relationships with other humans for the sake of honoring Him. It doesn’t always get to that point, but that is the goal. You see, God doesn’t just call us to be sort of into Him—He commands us to obsessively love Him. We are to consider Him our All-in-All, our Master, our Commander, our King. God is supposed to be the One who we are living to please. His opinion is supposed to trump all others in our minds. His approval is supposed to be everything to us.
And then there are people. How does God teach us to love people? Well, we’re supposed to be gracious, generous, merciful, and kind. But we’re also supposed to have boundaries, dole out discipline when needed, and be willing to cut ties when necessary. The kind of love that we’re supposed to be giving humans is a very different, far more limited kind of love than we’re supposed to be giving God. It’s totally inappropriate for us to obsess over humans, to pray to them, to worship them, to view ourselves as totally dependent on them, or to give them our absolute trust. We’re never supposed to give humans anything close to total submission, and yet total submission is definitely an attitude that we want to develop with God.
Now today, the Church is blowing off the difference between the kind of love you’re supposed to be giving God and the kind of love you’re supposed to be giving humans. By the time she’s teaching you to pray to human saints, worship human worship leaders, blindly trust your human teachers, and view yourself as totally dependent on a collection of Scriptures which were all written by humans, the Church is teaching you to treat humans like God’s equals. Then she vaults them even higher than God by teaching you that you need other humans to pray for you, lay hands on you, interpret God’s will for you, and spiritually intercede for you. Soon humans are our first loves in life, while God is just our last resort.
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Now if you try to share these ideas with other Christians, you’ll likely get a bunch of Scriptures thrown at you and a bunch of harsh criticism, so don’t bother. Because the Church worships the Bible, she ends up exalting all of the bad teaching in the Bible as correct. In the New Testament, we find the apostles John and Paul putting out a lot of bad teaching on the subject of loving humans. In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul writes a long speech about love in which he says loving other people—not God—is all that matters (see Discernment Charts – NT Epistles: If We Don’t Love Humans, We’re Worthless). In other words, Paul teaches that our relationships with other humans are far more important than our relationships with God. This is the same Paul who once boasted that he’d volunteer to be cut off from Christ in order to see more of his fellow Jews saved. Paul was a horrible spiritual role model in many ways, yet you’ll be hard-pressed to find Christians who will admit how obnoxious much of Paul’s teaching is.
As for the apostle John—he’s another wellspring of bad theology. John not only teaches that no true Christian could even desire to sin—which is a totally ludicrous claim—but he also says that anyone who doesn’t love people cannot possibly know God. Well, suppose Brianna was to measure the quality of her friends by the gifts they brought her. How well would that external judgment system work? Not well at all, for the people who brought Brianna the best gifts cared about her the least, whereas the woman who didn’t bring any gifts loved Brianna deeply. When we try to assess people’s heart attitudes by their external actions, we always end up drawing wrong conclusions about them. Happily, God doesn’t fall into this trap. Unlike humans, God is able to see your true intentions towards Him, so He never misjudges you.
Sincerely devoted Christians come in a wide variety of packages—some of which are very rude, hostile, and even hateful towards their fellow humans. But because God sees into our hearts, He never rejects those who sincerely care about Him, nor is He fooled by any of our pretenses. God knows who is for Him and who isn’t. He knows who really cares about Him, and who doesn’t. As a Christian who is currently stuck in a place of intensely disliking other humans, you need to stop obsessing over the things that don’t matter. Look inward, not outward. Think about your soul attitude towards God, not your feelings towards other humans. When you know that underneath all of the hostility, you really do want to please God, then you need to stand on that. Don’t expect other Christians to understand your true feelings about God, because they won’t. But God does understand, and His opinion is the only one that counts.
While science shuns religion, it is utterly religious itself. It insists that God cannot be–a theory which could be worth discussing if any sound argument could be developed to support it. But the truth is that the existence of God is the only rational explanation there is for all that we see around us, and a proper application of the scientific method–which invites us to put forth any hypothesis and then seek supporting evidence for it through logical proofs–would drive us to conclude that there is an intelligent Creator every time. Scientists say “prove that God is real” while refusing to acknowledge the evidence right in front of their faces. We would say to science “prove that God isn’t real.”
Now about timing: this site has only been around since June 2013. In those two years, we’ve noticed that the Holy Spirit is getting more aggressive in calling out the things He doesn’t like. You may have noticed how frequently we use the word “idiot” and other condescending titles as of late. Speaking for God means accurately conveying His message using His tone, His words, and His emphasis. Right now He wants to hold certain lines on vulgar language, but to be honest, “idiot” isn’t nearly a strong enough word to describe how angry and disgusted God is about some of these issues. God doesn’t have a problem being vulgar, as He demonstrates in the Bible (see this post). We expect that when the end times start, His language will get a lot more acrid. Meanwhile, He makes this site increasingly divisive by the kinds of topics He chooses to cover.
We do feel there is a strong connection between the end times being at the door and God suddenly making this information available in a public forum. The end times are going to be a major theological test for Christians. God is doing us all a huge favor by suddenly opening our eyes to understand so many of these issues. Consider what the end result is: we’re now able to swiftly get aligned with Him in many areas that we’ve been totally backwards about until now. Serious Christians sincerely care about honoring God–but there’s only so good of a job we can do without education. You’ll notice how many posts we put out about prayer–who ever saw any of that coming? Where do you ever hear it being taught that God finds it insulting when we keep asking Him for the same things over and over? Who knew He found the whole “prayer warrior” package so irreverent and irksome? Today Christians are intentionally imitating the prayer style of folks in the Bible, with no regard for what rebellious twerps so many of those folks were. Who ever points out how guys like Moses and Jeremiah were being inappropriate with some of the snarky prayers they put out? Unless God opens our eyes and shares His heart with us, we’re going to keep right on treating Him dishonorably. With the Church egging us on in all the wrong directions, what will happen when the end times start? We’ll all become that much more snarky.
The Incas who built Machu Picchu were entrenched in demonic worship. In this massive structure, we find many tools used for worshiping the sun, which they considered to be a god. All throughout time, man has felt the need to worship the things God has made instead of God Himself. The impressive thing about Machu Picchu is its massive size and extremely functional engineering feats. Should we be surprised that ancient peoples knew how to construct on the side of a mountain? No, we shouldn’t. The only reason we act so shocked is because we don’t credit them with enough intelligence. We also underestimate the intelligence of their main advisers in life–demons who masqueraded as various kinds of gods. Demons understand the physics of this world far better than we do, and are quite capable of teaching people how to build huge structures. When those structures will catch the eye of a whole nation and serve to lead thousands of souls into worshiping idols instead of God, demons are quite motivated to give their human builders useful tips. It isn’t God who inspired the Incas to construct a temple to the sun in Machu Pichu. God didn’t smile on the pharaohs of Egypt deifying themselves or forcing slaves to build their huge pyramid tombs. These things are really sad reminders of how much time and energy people will spend obsessing over lies that will only end up leading their souls into Hell.
Suppose a husband walks into his bedroom and finds his wife making love to another man. He gets so furious that he grabs a gun and shoots her dead. This is an extreme form of anger—one that seeks to destroy anything that provokes it. This is the kind of anger God has towards those who die without submitting to Jesus. It is with this kind of hateful rage that God will throw unsaved souls into Hell.
This is some pretty disturbing stuff, isn’t it? Well, those Holocaust concentration camps were very disturbing as well. When we see millions of people starving to death in a nationwide famine or dropping over with flu-like symptoms, it’s disturbing. When we see whole cities being bombed off the map and men massacring each other on the battlefield, it’s disturbing. In the Bible, God tells us that He’s the One responsible for all of it. So now we get to that million dollar question: What’s His point?
There are two ways that Christians act utterly absurd when it comes to discussing God’s role in mass killings. First, they try to deny that He is even involved—that is the height of lunacy. But once they finally do acknowledge that He’s involved, they act like the whole affair can be simply explained with some trite statement like, “He must have been mad at the people who died.” Here is more lunacy. You can’t be sure of God’s reasons for one soul dying, let alone millions. God has a long list of reasons for why He kills souls when He does. You can be familiar with some of the items on that list, but you can’t ever pinpoint which reason was motivating God’s actions in a specific event unless you receive explicit direction from Him. For the most part, God just isn’t going to tell you why He’s doing what He’s doing with another soul, because He considers it none of your business. God doesn’t even sit down and fully explain why He does what He does with you, so it’s more than a little absurd to stand around declaring that you know exactly why certain souls were gassed to death in Nazi concentration camps while others were not. The reality is that you don’t have the first clue. What you do know is that there is never any “one size fits all” answer in these scenarios. The best we can do is talk about probabilities.
The vast majority of souls in this world will never submit to God’s Authority while they are here, therefore they will end up in Hell. This is a reality that has been true since the very beginning: most humans reject God. Now once we die in a state of spiritual rebellion, God’s feelings towards us become intensely negative. “Unconditional love” is an utter delusion that we’ve invented to please our egos. God has always taught that His love is extremely conditional. We all start off being loved for free—we’ve done nothing to earn it. God chooses to love us just because He wants to. But He then says that this period of generosity will come to an end if we don’t treat Him with a certain level of respect. He also promises that our time on this planet will be extremely brief, yet none of us will know exactly how much time we have. Some of us will only be here a matter of days or hours. Others a few years, others will live to a ripe old age. But from the eternal perspective, even living to be a 110 is a mere flash in the pan. These facts put all of us in a rather urgent situation. If we defy God for too long, we might suddenly find ourselves struck down by Him and out of chances to repent. How does God feel when He is killing off defiant rebels? Angry, disgusted, vengeful—it’s a very negative combination of passions. How does God feel when He is killing off souls who sincerely care about pleasing Him? He’s very delighted with them and eager to bring them to their reward. What are the chances that every soul who got gassed in Nazi concentration camps was sincerely seeking God? Zilch. The far more likely scenario was that there was a blend of defiant rebels, hardcore believers, and carnal slackers. We could say the same for all the casualties of both World Wars and for all of the groups that we listed previously. Once you start dealing in massive casualties, it is quite unrealistic to suggest that everyone had the same spiritual attitude towards God, therefore it is ridiculous to paint God as having one emotion towards the whole group. God never loses track of individuals in a crowd. If you scoop up some sand on a beach, you see a handful of sand, but God sees a mass of uniquely shaped sand crystals which are each interesting in their own way. In the same way, when you read about mass casualties in the news, you start lumping all the souls together under some irrelevant label like “the Jews” or “the plane crash victims” or “the soldiers.” But God sees individual souls and His feelings towards each of those souls vary widely depending on how each soul is currently responding to Him.
Understanding that God always views us as unique individuals helps you to understand how personal His actions in each life are. It simply doesn’t work to say “all the Jews in that town were dragged off to the Holocaust,” because in real life certain Jews were hidden away in basements by people who were trying to take the high moral ground. How do we explain these anomalies? How do we explain why some survived the concentration camps and others did not? How do we explain why some were able to forgive and move on, while others were permanently crippled? The answer is that God’s care of each of us is extremely personal and strategic.
Wrath training is about learning to identify with God’s wrath as an isolated quality. To get you there, the Holy Spirit will begin dropping new perspectives into your brain: perspectives which cause you to start seeing the human race in an entirely different light. Instead of seeing creatures who share your same fragility and flaws, you will begin to see an ocean of creatures who are miserably failing to treat God with the honor and respect He deserves. During wrath training, we completely lose our grip on compassion, mercy, and love for our fellow man. We become consumed with a desire for God to be revered, worshiped, and honored by everything that He makes. So intense is this desire that we feel physically exhausted by it. Fits of rage overtake us when we are confronted with evidence of God being dishonored by the things He has made. The very mention of idolatry makes us want to rip someone’s face off. Because we are being introduced to the Divine view of things, and because the Divine view is a global one, wrath training does not drive us into the sort of petty tantrums we read about in the news in which one man picks up a gun and goes ballistic on his personal enemies. During wrath training, we are not focused on our personal enemies. We are not focused on ourselves at all, but rather on God. HE is the One who we feel jealously furious to protect, and nothing less than global destruction will come close to satisfying us. We want the entire human race to be transferred into Hell NOW. We find ourselves overwhelmed with an intense disgust for every created thing which dishonors God, including ourselves. In certain stages of this training, we can become so detached from our personal viewpoint that we’d even prefer to be in Hell ourselves rather than endure another second of God being dishonored. Suddenly NO ONE is treating God well enough, including ourselves, and this torments us to no end.
Now because God’s wrath is in direct conflict with many of His other qualities—such as His grace and long-suffering patience—we find ourselves becoming extremely frustrated by these qualities when we’re going through wrath training. Remember the purpose of this training is to build core identity in you about God’s wrath specifically—not to introduce you to some happy balance of traits. The balance comes later on. The first stage is all about understanding His wrath as an isolated trait, and that will drive you into an intense dislike of every other quality God has which tempers His wrath. By itself, God’s wrath does not want to be tempered. It wants to dominate the scene and stomp out everything that dares to come against God. When you sincerely care about pleasing God and you find yourself suddenly having a major problem with His mercy, love, and compassion, it’s easy to start panicking that you’re somehow going astray. This is when you need to focus on trusting your Trainer: the magnificent Holy Spirit. He is the One who is going to keep you in alignment with God, and He is quite capable of walking you through this entire process without losing you.
[About Deut. 22:28-29]
This is the verse that we find so particularly troublesome. And of course in our minds, we have already decided that the virgin was some sweet, innocent flower while the rapist was some sadistic creep. So when God commands these two to marry, all we see is Him grinding innocence into the dirt and casting some poor girl into the hands of a cruel abuser for the rest of her days while He turns His back on her tears. Conclusion: God is a jerk.
So what would it look like for God not to be a jerk? The rapist should get executed of course—that’s what most women would say today. In other words, society should treat rape like an unpardonable sin. Well, if women get to make this call, then men should get to throw something in as well. All these married women today who go flirting with other men in public—why should they get to be excused of their adulterous behavior? Just because they can’t physically force a man to have sex with them hardly means they are innocent. Jesus said that lusting over a person in your heart is the same as sleeping with them. Just because women can’t physically overpower men hardly lessons their sins in God’s eyes, for He knows that women are doing the most damage that they can with the tools they have available. If they could easily rape men, they would. But since they can’t, their perverse desire for domination plays out in other forms, such as constantly withholding sex from their husbands as a means of controlling them. The reality is that each gender is constantly looking for ways to inflict misery on the other one.
[...]
So let’s consider things from the rapist’s point of view. A man who rapes a woman is not a lower life form, he is simply a human being with some serious issues. Who in this world can claim they don’t have issues?
[...]
Now you’re a young virgin living on your father’s farm. One day a man comes along, sees you, and rapes you. By the time your fathers and brothers come to your rescue it’s too late. You have been permanently soiled, and thanks to this jerk, you no longer qualify as a woman who is eligible to marry. First time sex is supposed to be a consummation of marriage, but your rapist was trying to steal the fun part without having to pay the price of hard work and commitment. This is where Yahweh intervenes on your behalf. He commands your rapist to marry you. The man is not going to get away with just skipping off and leaving you with the stigma of a woman who has slept around. The man will now have to take you as his wife and share his inheritance with you. And if you’re now pregnant, your child is not going to be left as some fatherless bastard. Because Yahweh makes your rapist take responsibility for what he’s done, He really takes the fun out of rape, which in turn causes a lot fewer men to try it.
Surf the internet and you’ll find a whole lot of people who are flaunting their rebellion towards God. They complain that the Christian God is a sadistic ogre who is unreasonably harsh. They use examples of Yahweh trashing people in the Old Testament to make the point that He’s a heartless creep. What these people are really saying is that they don’t agree with how God operates. Fine. No human alive totally agrees with everything about the way God operates. If Christians were honest, they would admit that the idea of Hell really disturbs them. Oh, sure, you can get a lot more comfortable with Hell’s existence once you believe that you personally will never end up there. But when we really stop to ponder that the same Gods who will be hanging out with us in Heaven will be simultaneously getting high on torturing Their own fragile creatures in Hell—well, that’s upsetting.
There are a lot of facts about your Creators that you are going to find very disturbing. There are lot of things about Them that you are going to strongly disapprove of and disagree with. Fine. They never said you have to approve of Them or understand Them in order to be accepted by Them. They only demand submission, and submission is well within your grasp.
Suppose you have a boss at work who you don’t like. He’s abrasive, rude, and unreasonable. He’s always finding fault with people and He never expresses any appreciation for your work. When this guy comes into view, do you feel all warm and fuzzy? No, you tense up and feel anxious about him coming in your direction. Some of us have been taught from childhood that God is a brooding volcano who is up in Heaven making tick marks on a blackboard whenever we screw up. If this is your background, are you going to be able to resonate with Yahweh’s claims to be good? Are you going to be able to emotionally connect with the idea of Him deeply loving you? No. Those words are going to bounce right off your brain. Does that mean you can’t get saved? Not at all. Salvation is a matter of submission, you can sufficiently submit to God from any starting point.
Let’s go back to that nasty human boss you have. When the man comes over and orders you to do something, you might think that what he’s asking you to do is a bad idea and an inefficient way to get things done. But because he’s the boss, you do what he’s telling you to do. This is submission. You don’t have to like someone to submit to them. You don’t have to like Jesus before you can properly submit to Him. You don’t have to think Yahweh’s New Covenant is fabulous before you can properly submit to Him. You don’t have to be able to visualize what the Holy Spirit looks like before you can submit to Him. Submission is about recognizing that you are outranked by your Makers and accepting Their assessment of things. If They say you’re some depraved sinner, then that’s how it is. You accept Their view of reality even though you might not approve of it or be able to honestly agree with it. No human who is really thinking can sincerely agree that eternal torment in Hell is a reasonable response to our defying God for some nanosecond of time.
Submission only comes up when there is some element of disagreement. As long as you and your boss agree about everything, there is no submission happening. You’re doing what you want to do. It’s when your boss makes a call that you don’t agree with that an opportunity to submit is created. That’s when you have the choice to either submit to your boss simply because he outranks you, or to defy him by acting like his equal or superior.
The desire to hurt and be hurt, along with the desire to dominate and be dominated, runs deep within human nature. We were created by God to find pleasure in total submission to Him, and since submission is only possible where there is a difference in wills, God then designed us with an intense desire to dominate. Throw God out of the picture and these two intensely strong desires start looking for other targets that they can feast on. Other humans stand out as very tantalizing subjects, and soon we’re grouping up in partnerships in which BDSM “play” is engaged in.
So what exactly is BDSM? The broadest definition of the acronym attempts to combine the concepts of bondage/domination (B/D) with dominance/submission (D/S) and finally sadism/masochism (S/M). The basic goal is to enhance the experience of sexual arousal by introducing the elements of physical abuse, emotional degradation, and sexual abuse. Fans of BDSM look down on normal or “vanilla” sex as being dull and unsatisfying, thus they say, “Hey, here’s an idea: let’s torture and rape each other.” And because there are two consenting adults involved (at least everyone’s consenting when the games first begin), they don’t use words like torture, assault, and abuse, even though they’re engaging in the same kinds of activities. Online there are whole arsenals of torture devices which are being sold under the label of “sex toys.” The draw of these things is that they make it easier to really hurt each other. Whips, blindfolds, collars, chains, spanking paddles—it’s all good fun, right? It’s a cinch to find special devices that are designed to inflict pain on the most sensitive areas of the body (bring on those nipple pinchers, and genital whips). And if anyone tries to use the term “perverse” about such activities, the BDSM community gets all up in arms about being discriminated against.
So why is BDSM bad? It’s a very real thing to get sexually aroused by beating someone until they’re bleeding and crying. And as long as your victim cheerfully signed on to “play”, what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that mutual consent doesn’t define right and wrong, God does, and He says that this whole BDSM package is very wrong. Try to blow off the limitations God has set on you, and He responds with some creative forms of discipline. For example, God has set limits on how much heat your soft tissues can withstand without becoming damaged. You can try to ignore those limits by sticking your hand in a fire or touching that hot stove burner. Rather than take away your option to disrespect His rules, God lets you rebel to your heart’s content—but He also makes sure you get burned in the process. Keep sticking your hand in that fire, and you’re going to end up with severe injuries and eventually a loss of functionality.
The same principle is at work with BDSM. God is totally against the entire “degrade and be degraded” package. You can choose not to respect this, but you can’t change the fact that God has set limits on you which you cannot push past without injuring yourself. BDSM is going to mess you up on deep levels. It will cripple your ability to form healthy relationships, it will warp your view of people as well as yourself, and it will cause you to drift way off course spiritually. You see, you can’t go against God’s rules without getting burned. There’s just no way to sneak around a Creator who rules with absolute Authority while carefully coordinating every detail of your personal life.
So what exactly is God’s problem with BDSM? God is certainly into submission, and He’s a very dominating Guy. So what’s wrong with us having a lark with these themes? Well the problem is that when we play our BDSM games, we’re focusing on the wrong targets.
God is the most selfish Being there is—He wants everything we do to revolve around Him. This is why He tells us to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength. In other words, God commands us to be obsessed with Him. Why? Because He loves Himself more than anyone else, and He wants us to do likewise. This can all sound quite negative when we think about it through the grid of carnal pride, but in reality, what God demands from us is what will end up bringing us the greatest joy. Our selfish God designed us to thrive when we revolve our lives around Him. The more we think about God, crave Him, pursue Him, and worship Him, the more satisfied our souls become. We were designed to feel truly complete only when everything we do is about pleasing God. What does this set up tell us about God? Obviously His ego is huge. But in the end, we will find that we want a God who thinks He is magnificent because we were designed by God to love worshiping Him.
Suppose God told you to step off the edge of a high cliff and just keep going. In other words, He told you to walk on air. But wait a second—humans can’t walk on air. They can’t walk on water, either, but Peter did for at least a few seconds. What do you do when God calls you to do what is humanly impossible? What do you do when He assigns you a mission which thousands have attempted before you only to fall flat on their faces? How many corpses can you step over on a battlefield before you panic and run away, convinced that you’ll be the next one to fall if you keep pressing onward?
When God calls us to do something impossible in the distant future, how do we prepare? The more we think about what’s coming, the more clearly we see the limits of our own abilities. Human beings are extremely fragile creatures—easily frightened, overwhelmed, and wounded. The more we contemplate our own frailty, the more threatened we feel by what is coming. Early on it’s easy to be deluded by the assumption that we’re some special brand of human—the exception to many common rules. But the truth is that we’re not. As the future rushes towards us, the differences between us and all of those who failed before us shrink away until there are no differences at all. We are just like them, and they failed to do what God is now calling us to do. They didn’t fail due to a lack of effort—they failed because they were humans, and humans are fragile, weak, and limited. We need God. We need Him desperately in every area. It is this revelation that truly prepares us to succeed in the face of overwhelming opposition. If God does not make us stand, then there is no question that we will fall.
What is it that runs through your mind as you stand on the edge of that cliff, trying to work up the courage to step out onto nothingness? In such a moment, the great fear that seizes hold of you causes your vast limitations to suddenly become crystal clear. You realize how utterly ludicrous it is to expect particles of air to hold your weight. This just simply isn’t how the world works. When you step over an edge, you fall downwards. You will always fall downwards unless God has decided to miraculously intervene. So has He?
Before attempting the impossible, we must be certain in our souls of what God has commanded us to do. There’s no room for “name it and claim it” foolishness. Divine empowerment is not something we can greedily grab at whenever we choose. It is not what we want that drives the activity in this world, it is what God wants. If we are charging ahead without His explicit authorization, then we have no right to expect His support in the midst of it. But if we know that we are marching out on His orders and that our motivation is to please Him, then we can indeed find the courage to step off of that cliff. We can climb out of the boat and attempt to walk on water. We can face down the heat of the fiery furnace. When we know that we are acting on God’s command, we know that He will be with us, no matter what the outcome. When we have God’s approval, it really doesn’t matter if we live or die. We do not need every moment to look and feel victorious in order to know that we are on the winning side. Preparing to do the impossible for God is a matter of discarding every ounce of confidence that you still have in yourself and putting all of your confidence in God alone. The impossible will never become possible for humans, yet it is a very simple matter for God. It is God who can do all things, not us. When He announces that He wants to do the impossible through us, He is merely calling us to be His vessels. He wants our willingness, not our strength. He wants us to follow His orders because of who He is to us.
If you know that God has called you to do the impossible, and you feel completely unequipped, good. Confidence in your own abilities is the last thing you want at a time like this. Stop searching for some secret reservoir of strength within yourself because there isn’t one. Focus on God instead, and on His endless resources. When you know that He is with you, that is all you need to know.
We love working with sexual perverts—especially those who have a bunch of sex crimes on their record. Why? Because there’s just so much good news that we can tell you which no one else wants to talk about. We know that you’re getting seriously desperate by the time you become an active sex offender, and the higher the shame piles up on you, the closer you’re getting to your breaking point, and that’s when you will finally become receptive to some critical truths that can radically improve your quality of life. One of those truths is that you simply had no say in defining the basic appetites of your sex drive. Sure you can do things to warp it further once it’s already in motion, but when it comes to defining the kinds of targets that it initially wants, that’s just not in your control. Just as God didn’t ask you which flavors of food you’d like your tongue to enjoy most in life, He didn’t give you a say in what kinds of targets your sex drive would fixate on. And where God gives you no choice, He doesn’t sit around blaming you for being who you are.
While it’s commonly believed that God hates gays and pedophiles, this is simply not true. God loves all souls, and He doesn’t confuse your soul with your sex drive. Every human is packed with depravity, and every human is filled with perverse sexual desires. While your society uses a very narrow definition of the term sexual pervert, God’s definition of the term is so staggeringly broad that we all qualify. This means that if God isn’t willing to seriously love on sexual perverts, then no one can get saved, and we’re all on our way to Hell.
God has a glorious of way of leveling the playing field so that no one can pull rank on anyone else. While the straights look down on the pedophiles, they’re no better in God’s eyes. By the time we’ve got men jumping in the sack with every sexy babe that they meet and women fantasizing about fictitious dream lovers, no one is anywhere close to meeting God’s definition of sexual purity. We’re all in the cesspool of perversion together, and God is right in it with us, calling us to stop using our sexual issues as an excuse to keep our distance from Him.
Is it a drag to be stuck with a sex drive that is lusting after the wrong targets? Yes, it is. And does being stuck with depraved desires mean we have some pity pass from God to go ravage whoever we want whenever we want? Certainly not. God calls us to come to Him and surrender ourselves into His hands—perversity and all. He tells us that if we do not hold back in the submission department, He will use our perverse desires as a catalyst for positive transformation. Show us a mind that is plagued with sick fantasies, and we’ll show you a breeding ground for fabulous compassion, mercy and love. It’s by getting continuously pummeled with defeat that we acquire true humility and a strong grip on our dependency on God. Nothing shatters the illusion that we are intrinsically good like a perverse sex drive. Nothing crushes the delusion that you can rise above sin like having those disgusting fantasies running in a continuous loop through your brain. Sexual perverts are like diamonds that are buried in a swamp of sludge: they’re just waiting to be fished out and washed off so that their beautiful sparkle can be seen by all. So if you’ve come to realize that something is seriously warped way down deep in the core of your being where you just can’t get at it, don’t despair. A perverse sex drive isn’t cause for despair. It’s evidence of thrilling potential.
Demons are scary. Maybe when you first met yours, they put on their friendly act in order to lure you in. But at some point, they started showing their nasty side and now you’re in serious torment. Maybe demons are attacking your body. Maybe they’re attacking your mind. Maybe they’re attacking your surroundings. Whatever their methodology is, we can teach you how to deal with these persistent pests in a way that will help your soul.
When it comes to addressing persistent demon problems (PDPs), the Church can be counted on to point you in the wrong direction. Instead of teaching you how to grow through the experience, she teaches you to view the whole thing like a power struggle between God and angelic beings. The Church encourages you to be afraid, and then to imitate dark magic techniques by casting spells, wielding the power of magic charms, and calling upon powerful, more experienced sorcerers to come cast spells on your behalf. Don’t believe it? That’s because you’ve been blinded by the way the Church has dolled up her forms of sorcery. Rebuking in Jesus’ Name and shouting out Bible verses—that’s just basic spell casting. Holding up the Bibles and the crosses while you fling around the holy water—that’s just playing with magic charms. Calling the priest to come perform an exorcism ritual—that’s just networking among sorcerers. Fasting—that’s just you trying to coerce God into doing what you want. All of these theatrics are based on the same flawed assumptions that what’s happening to you isn’t supposed to be happening to you. In other words, God has dropped the ball. You simply can’t justify going through a bunch of hoopla in order to get God’s attention unless you first accept the lie that God isn’t already in control of the situation.
Thanks to the Church’s idiocy and the human lust for power, most Christians have bought into the theory that their God is some impotent ninny who has had His own creation run amuck on Him. He’s now up in Heaven feeling totally overwhelmed by the chaos that is currently happening in this world of ours, which is why it is so critical that we constantly bombard Him with instructions on how to run His own universe. “Do this. Stop that. Fix him. Save her.” How can we sincerely admire a Being who is so stupid that He takes our shortsighted foolishness for wisdom? What kind of weird trip are Christians on when they stand around singing about how God is in control when they don’t really think He’s in control at all?
What hope is there for the committed Christian? Isn’t there some sense in which we can look forward to greater blessings on this earth than those who are rebelling against God? Indeed we can. Intimacy with God is so glorious that everything else in this world becomes meaningless by comparison. Even the best that this world has to offer fades into the background as trivial details compared to knowing God and knowing that He is pleased with us. This is why we find Christians in very miserable looking circumstances walking about with strange grins on their faces. When our souls are flooded with God, we simply aren’t so concerned with what is happening to our bodies or our bank accounts. It’s not that we stop feeling the reality of our circumstances, but our view of those circumstances drastically changes.
Suppose I were to tell you that I fixed the flat tire on your car for you. Naturally, you would be pleased not to have to deal with that chore. But then suppose you got a call and found out that you just got a huge promotion at work. You’re still glad about the car, but you’re way more excited about the promotion. The fixed tire goes from being great to being a convenient detail. Now suppose I hadn’t fixed your tire and your car was still sitting lopsided in your driveway. You’re tired and you just don’t want to deal with it. Then you get the call about the promotion. What happens to your energy level? It suddenly spikes, your mood instantly soars and pretty soon you’re out there whistling happily as you get out your spare. The tire problem never went anywhere, but your perspective of it drastically changed. It went from feeling like a major trial to a simple little chore that you could quickly take care of. God has the same kind of effect on us. The closer we get to Him, the more ALL of our trials seem like minor inconveniences in the light of the glorious soul promotion we’re experiencing with Him. We get so focused on spiritual priorities that we just aren’t very affected when earthly details go wrong.
When we align with God’s priorities for us, when we agree that drawing closer to Him is the most important thing in life, then we find ourselves in the best possible situation. Every trial we go through ends up spiritually strengthening us and over time the suffering we experience on this earth becomes less and less important to us as our joy with the Lord increases exponentially. No one has it better than sold out Christians. We are the wealthiest souls on earth. We are the ones that everyone would envy if they could see what we truly have. But they can’t, for God keeps the joy of intimacy with Him hidden away in the secret rooms of our soul. Those around us only catch a glimpse now and then—a smile on our faces, a light in our eyes, or a strange aura of peace about us that makes them wonder what it is that is so different about us. And of course we can’t totally explain, for our spiritual treasures defy description. We can only advise them to do what we did: to pursue God with all that they are and ask Him to have His total way in their lives. Then perhaps one day they’ll be as indescribably happy as we are.
Jesus sounds rather two-faced, doesn’t He? Well, that’s because He is.
It’s not hard to find God contradicting Himself in the Bible. Those who are looking for excuses not to submit to God like to compile lists of these contradictions and say, “See! God is a hypocrite! Who needs Him?!” The problem with this argument is that what they’re really saying is, “I shouldn’t have to believe in God until I approve of how He operates.” Well, no, this isn’t how it works. No one will escape the torments of Hell by pulling out the “but I didn’t approve” card. God doesn’t care if we approve of His methods or not. He simply introduces Himself to us—contradictions and all—then He DEMANDS that we submit to Him. If we defy Him, He retaliates by torturing us forever. We might think this system is unfair, but God thinks it is fabulous.
The key to thriving as a cop is keeping your focus on eternal priorities. It’s not your job to maintain justice in this world. For you, this job is just a tool that God has chosen to bring you closer to Him. Life is about you and God. Growing closer to Him and pleasing Him—nothing else matters.
Like a new flower garden which slowly evolves from a bed of plain green shoots to a lush display of colorful blooms, God wants your relationship with Him to be in a continuous state of transformation. There is so much He wants to teach you about who He is and who He designed you to be. It has always been about YOU and Him. Your children—as wonderful as they were—simply have no role in your personal relationship with God. It’s not you, God, and the people you love the most on earth. It’s just you and God. This is an intimate marriage—a private love affair filled with bedroom secrets that will never be shared with anyone else. By stripping away a relationship that was very close and dear to you, God makes room for your personal bond with Him to thrive. Even the best, most wonderful gifts in life can get in the way of our own journey with God. When He takes a child, He is saying that at this point in your personal walk with Him, it is better for that soul and you to move apart from each other and continue on in separate directions. Are you willing to trust His judgment?
God loves you infinitely more than you loved your child. Your pain is most serious to Him. He will not spend such costly tears on something trivial. Are you willing to believe Him when He says this was a necessary thing? Are you willing to believe that this new, heartbreaking road He has forced you down really will lead to a far better place than the road you were on before? EVERYTHING God puts you through is for your long-term spiritual BEST. Of course the death of a child feels terribly unnecessary and useless—especially when the circumstances of death seem like some random accident that wasn’t supposed to happen. Yet there are no accidents in God’s universe—only very intentional choices and carefully controlled events.
So what can we Christians learn from this underwear metaphor? Well, as uncomfortable as the imagery might make us, it teaches an important lesson about how God wants His people to respond to Him. When God calls out for any soul to come to Him, He wants an enthusiastic response. He wants souls to cling to Him tightly—as tightly as, well, underwear.
Before the days of elastic bands, a man had to cinch his loincloth pretty tight to make sure it would stay on as he went about his business. So this isn’t the image of a people loosely hugging God, but one of souls locking their arms around Him in a tight embrace. Once you get past the weird feeling of being likened to underwear, think about how awesome it is that your Creator wants His teensy little creatures to cling to Him so tightly. Our Gods are not indifferent towards us—instead They respond in extreme ways to our response to Them. Our soul choices are very important to Them. They don’t take a “whatever” view of us. So now we come to that all important question: how tightly are you clinging to God? Did you fall off ten steps ago because you just really don’t care about who He is or what He wants? Or are you giving Him that vice grip? Yahweh says that what He likes is underwear that is gripping nice and tight—the kind that won’t come off no matter how many jumping jacks He does. If you know you’re just not there in your personal walk with Him, then ask Him to get you there. It is such a blessing that we have Creators who are this interested in us—if we’re going to blow off such an amazing invitation, well then we really do deserve to rot away.
Whether it’s good, bad, nice or nasty, it was created by God for His own pleasure. Everything God does benefits God in some way. He is a self-serving Being, and He never claims to be otherwise. We’re the ones who invented a God who only thinks of other creatures and pines over humanity with a desperate need to love us. But this egotistical fantasy is hardly grounded in truth. We exist because our existence is doing something positive for God. He has worked things out so that no matter where we end up in eternity—Heaven or Hell—He will be getting some personal benefit out of sustaining our existence. God always gives to get.
As a shepherd of the flock, your job is to keep the flock focused on God. You can hardly succeed at doing this when you’re confusing God with Satan. Just look at those New Testament Pharisees: what a train wreck. You don’t want to be like those morons. And yet the prophet who is going to be playing a Moses-type role during the end times is going to look and sound a lot more demonic than Jesus did to the Jews. Of course this is only because the litmus tests we’re using to tell God from demons these days are completely irrelevant. We think that anyone who gets off on God killing people can’t be aligned with Him. Why ever not? Shouldn’t a true prophet of God be displaying a zealous devotion to God’s agenda? We all know that people don’t die by accident in this world—God kills them. If God is killing people, He obviously has good reasons for doing so, and any prophet who is truly aligned with Him will not be publicly beefing against His Divine agenda. Because God is going to be doing so much killing during the end times, His devoted prophet is going to come across as a rather bloodthirsty sadist, especially when the media goes to work with their usual biased reporting. This is going to result in a bunch of wide-eyed parishioners coming to you asking, “How can someone like that really be from God?”
As we explain in some of our other end time preparation posts, God is going to be performing all kinds of devastating and destructive miracles through His end time representative. You are going to see film footage of this person appearing to kill and maim people merely by pointing at them. You’re going to see stereotypically “good” targets like emergency workers and hospitals getting nailed by God’s destructive power. Efforts to help the hurting will be dramatically sabotaged. Impossible alterations of matter will occur: skyscrapers being turned into ice, asphalt morphing into molten lava, sidewalks behaving like quicksand. Don’t believe it? Read your Bibles. If you can believe in a worldwide flood, God causing the sun to stand still in the sky for Joshua, and Him creating a dry path through both the Red Sea and the Jordan River, why is it so fantastic to think that He can cause a city street to turn into a carpet of stinging insects? Didn’t God turn all the dust in Egypt into a plague of gnats? If God could open the earth to swallow up the rebellious Korah, then close the earth again immediately afterwards, why can’t He perform similar feats down a city street? He can and He will. If you’re going to blow off prophetic warnings of the end times, make sure you’re not blowing off the wrong ones. The end times are not going to be at all like these idiots in the Church are saying. All of this guff about America turning Islam or President Obama cooking up evil conspiracies behind the scenes. You ought to know better than to believe any prophecy that turns your focus off of God and onto idiot demons and their foolish humans. While countless false prophets are filling your heads with a bunch of theatrical rot just to try and make a name for themselves, we are telling you what is actually in store so that you can start seeking the Holy Spirit’s wisdom now about how He wants you to guide your flock when the theological crisis begins.
"God told me” is one of the most abused statements in Christendom. But guess what? It’s the only basis on which you’re trusting in all of those biblical authors. Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Paul, Peter, John—all of these folks claimed to know what they knew based on revelations from God. How do you know that they weren’t deluded? How do you know we’re not deluded? Today the Church is stuffed to the gills with prophets, preachers, and theologians who are all making the same claim: “I know what I know because God told me.” When Christians claim that the Bible is inerrant, what they’re really saying is, “None of those people who said ‘God told me’ could possibly be wrong.” Well, since when? Just because some ancient Church father decided to blindly accept the claims of Moses, Paul, and Peter, does that mean you should do the same? Paul claimed to receive direct revelations from Jesus. We could make the same claim, but we say that a lot of what Paul says was wrong. Whose “God told me” should you give higher priority to—ours or Paul’s? Should you be blindly trusting in a bunch of dead people who you never knew personally? You don’t know us any better than you know Paul, so on what basis can you trust anything that we say about God?
Everyone who is making claims about God is either saying “God told me” or they’re standing on someone else’s “God told me.” There is no other authority, for if God isn’t telling somebody something, then there is no truth to be had. God is the only Source of truth, and the Church is filled with folks who are claiming to have some special pipeline to Divine revelation. But here’s the thing: someone else’s revelations are worthless to you until God confirms them to you. You must seek God’s confirmation directly—and that means asking the Holy Spirit to show you if there is any truth to what you’re being told. If you don’t do this and you try to ride on the confidence of other people, guess what? You’re going to crash and burn. If He sees that you are refusing to trust Him as the Supreme Authority in your life, God will intentionally shipwreck your faith. How do you think all of these pompous prophets and anointed windbags got into the sorry shape they’re in today? When we defy God, He retaliates with discipline, and blinding us to truth is one of His favorite tactics to use on those who think they can find wisdom apart from Him.
There is no wisdom apart from God. Yahweh, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are the only Ones you can absolutely trust—everyone else must be viewed with suspicion. Maybe you think everything we write is spot on correct and you feel like God is confirming the truth of our messages to your soul. Does that mean you can stop seeking Him and start accepting us as stand-ins for the Holy Spirit in your life? Absolutely not. Good teachers go bad. Humans are not above error. We could write some brilliant bit of truth one day and put out a pile of irreverent rot the next. You can’t count on people. People are not perfect. Only God is perfect.
Now your kid is going to need help with this concept of a good God doing nasty things. Here’s where you need to step up with some education about Divine motivations. God loves all people and He wants everyone to come to Him. But God doesn’t force salvation on anyone—He gives them the option of defying Him and ending up in Hell. Now is not the time to pussyfoot around the topic of Hell with your kids. We aren’t doing them any favors by presenting God as some smiling pushover who takes everyone we love to Heaven just because we love them. God is the King—if we don’t obey Him, there are serious consequences. When we intentionally hide this truth from our kids, we end up in big trouble with God.
God has arranged things so that you have enormous credibility with your kids from the moment they are born. You’re supposed to be using their trusting nature to expose them to essential truths about God: who He is, how much He loves them, and what He requires of them in order for them to obtain His salvation. We need to be careful not to put obstacles between our kids and God by teaching them a bunch of lies. When you know there’s a 99.99% chance that Aunt Martha went to Hell, but you tell your kids that she’s turned into some angel who is looking down on them from Heaven, you are BOLDFACED LYING and you are getting yourself in big trouble with God. No, it’s really not okay to make a mockery out of salvation and act like God’s wrath is non-existent. It’s really not okay to teach your kid that eternity is some “choose your own ending” affair. Hell is real. God’s wrath is real. God’s disgust with rebellion is going to be in front of our faces like never before during the end times, and you need to prepare your child to recognize what is going on. God is GOOD, but God has BOUNDARIES. He doesn’t let people mock Him forever.
Now clearly we need to be sensitive in the way that we present tough truths to our kids. We don’t go on at length about Aunt Martha roasting in eternal torment. But instead of making empty promises, we say, “IF she submitted to Jesus, then she’s certainly in Heaven. But unfortunately, we don’t know for sure that she made that choice. Obedience is a very serious issue to God. He says that once we die in this world, it’s too late to change our attitudes towards Him. If we haven’t gotten right with Him, we are going to end up in Hell.” We don’t encourage our kids to view the dead as their supernatural guardians. This kind of idolatry infuriates our jealous Creators. Instead, your kids need to know that God loves them a billion times more than any humans ever could, and the fact that HE is always with them is more than enough. Once loved ones die, they are GONE, and there is no way to communicate with them. Should God choose to kill YOU off before your kids during the end times, you want to have done what you could to steer your kids away from spending the rest of their lives praying to you for protection and talking to some photograph of your face. Such a focus won’t take them anywhere good. They need to see God as the One who is always with them, and He is the One they need to be talking to when they are alone and afraid.
The Holy Spirit is an amazingly complex personality who has an insatiable appetite for glory and zero tolerance for Jesus and Yahweh being disrespected. The Holy Spirit is the last Guy you want to be screwing around with and yet He’s also the One controlling your relationship with your Gods. You see, you can’t possibly succeed with your Creators until you know what They want, and the Holy Spirit is the One who controls your access to spiritual understanding. The Holy Spirit can manipulate your soul easier than you can shape a lump of soft clay. In the blink of an eye, the Holy Spirit can wipe all spiritual wisdom and understanding from your mind and reduce you to an ignorant bumpkin who wouldn’t recognize Jesus if you tripped over Him.
The Holy Spirit is a huge fan of revenge, and He is all for the idea of eternally torturing souls who refuse to properly submit to their Creators on earth. If you get on His good side, you will find the Holy Spirit to be the most gracious, kind, gentle, encouraging, loving, and amazing Being in existence. Once you’ve spent enough time with Him, you can’t imagine life without Him. He’s simply irreplaceable—as are Jesus and Yahweh. All three of our Creators are endlessly fascinating and utterly addictive to be around. But They are zealously devoted to Each Other. If you offend One, you offend Them all. If you defy One, They all retaliate. There is no way to divide and conquer, and before you can even get to square one with any of Them, you have to deal with the Holy Spirit. He is the Gatekeeper—the One who controls your access to both salvation and spiritual maturity. If you irritate the Holy Spirit too much for too long, He will write you off as permanently damned, at which point it will be impossible for you to obtain salvation. Here’s a second major mistake people make about God: they assume that salvation will always be available to them.
Salvation is not like the automatic door to a grocery store that slides open the moment you come within view of the motion sensing camera. Salvation is more like a private party that you don’t even know is happening until you receive an invitation in the mail. Without that invitation, you don’t know when or where the party will be. The Holy Spirit is the One who sends out the invitations, but they’re a special kind of invitation. The Holy Spirit is like the captain of a ship who comes to rescue you from a desert island where you are stranded. When the Holy Spirit calls out to you to come aboard His ship, He expects you to hop to it. If you ask Him to wait until you’ve finished your lunch or to come back at at a more convenient time, He leaves, and that might be the last you ever see of Him. Don’t fall for the popular lie that your Gods are always willing to take you. They most certainly are not. The Holy Spirit will only give you a limited number of chances to come and get right with your Gods by sufficiently submitting to Them. You have no idea how many chances the Holy Spirit will give you, and you won’t get any help with this mystery by looking around at how He deals with other people.
The Holy Spirit treats us all differently. Look around at the world, and notice how everyone’s dying at different ages. While we spend enormous effort tracking causes of death, there’s only ever one real explanation for why someone died: God killed them. Death is when the Holy Spirit decides to separate your soul from your body and transfer your soul on to a different dimension. He could decide to do this with you at any time. Maybe He’ll kill you tomorrow. Maybe He’ll kill you thirty years from now. Maybe He’ll take you tonight in your sleep. You really have no idea, nor do you have any control over how and when He decides to end your tour of earth. Your diet, your health, the quality of your genes—none of these factors determine when God will decide to kill you. He’ll kill you when He’s in the mood to do so, and there’s nothing you can do to speed Him up or slow Him down. Many souls fall for the ridiculous notion that they’ll control when they die by committing suicide. Do you know how many suicide attempts God botches every day? You are not in control of the length of your life, the timing of your death, or God’s receptiveness towards you. This is why the idea of trying to manipulate God is so utterly ludicrous. You can’t manipulate Someone who controls every aspect of your existence.
We should be treating our Gods very differently than we treat other humans. For example, it is utterly inappropriate and dangerous to fully submit ourselves to other human beings, but it is essential that we fully submit ourselves to our Creators. Humans must never be blindly trusted, but our Creators should be. We must be guarded about how dependent we allow ourselves to become on other humans. “I can’t live without you. I could never be satisfied without you. I can’t breathe without you”—when we say or sing such statements to other human beings, it is an outrageous offense to our Creators. They are extremely jealous by Nature, and They deeply resent us exalting mere created things as essential to our existence and happiness.
Look around this planet and you’ll notice that this place wasn’t constructed to accommodate us. It was constructed for God. So much of this earth we can’t even survive in: scorching deserts, deep oceans, freezing mountain peaks. In the Bible, God boasts of making flowers bloom in the desert where no human eyes will see them. Why does He bother? Because this world isn’t about us. It’s about Him. Everything that God creates is for His benefit. So when we thumb our noses at Him, tune Him out, redefine Him, boss Him about, and actually tell ourselves we’ve triumphed over Him because He isn’t instantly roaring back, we’re so blind. We’re such fools. He’s lured us so effectively into His trap that we didn’t even notice when we crossed the line of no return. It is so dangerous to try and dominate the Almighty Creator. To insist that He revolve around us as ancient Israel does all throughout the Bible—how insane we are to think God would ever really agree to such an agenda. Yahweh says over and over in the Old Testament that He will not share His glory with anyone. As we soak in His glory on a daily basis without seeing any lightning strike, we decide His warnings are nothing but air. But just wait. This world is far too limited to provide satisfying means of revenge for a God whose Name is Jealous. It simply doesn’t bother God to let us rebel our little hearts out while we’re here, because He’s got Hell waiting for us—a place with torments that we can’t even begin to fathom. It won’t be anything like these descriptions we find in the Bible—those are all earthly metaphors which are only meant to teach general concepts. The real place in eternity where God’s enemies will end up is going to be one of torments which our tiny minds can’t even conceive of. God solemnly warns us not to mess with Him or He will make us sorry. He warns us that we’ll pay for our defiance on the other side. He says that even if we end up in Heaven, there will be consequences to pay. We think He’s exaggerating. How wrong we are (see The Eternal Cost of Defying God: A Warning for Christians).
God wants us to experience pain: many, many forms of it. It has always been His intention for the human race to fall into sin and struggle along under the context of a curse. Those who say God hates pain forget who it was that was doing all the cursing in Eden: it wasn’t Satan who came up with the idea of women having pain in childbirth or men toiling in misery. God was the One who brought all forms of pain into this world and cursed it forevermore. Adam and Eve were powerless beings whose act of biting into the flesh of a fruit had no adverse effects on the way the world worked. It was God who chose to make a big deal out of their action, and it was God who chose to use their defiance as an excuse to unleash evil into the world—evil which He demonstrated complete control over by announcing just when and how it would be loosed upon us.
In the Bible, we find many examples of the specific forms God’s wrath takes in this world, such as:
Killing individuals through supernatural means.
(ex: the fire that consumed Nadab & Abihu; the fire that consumed soldiers who tried to arrest Elijah; God suddenly striking Herod down and causing him to be eaten by maggots; God striking dead the man who touched His Ark)
The mass slaughter of people through supernatural means
(ex: the Red Sea collapsing on the Egyptian army; God raining hailstones down on a fleeing army; God massacring Israelites after King David’s census)
The sudden onset of widespread diseases.
(ex: the plague of boils; the plague that swept through the Israelite camp after they ate quail; the plague of tumors on the Philistines after they stole the Ark)
Supernaturally inflicting humans with dramatic diseases.
(ex: God turning Miriam’s skin white and necrotic; God turning Elisha’s servant Gehazi into a leper)
Terrifying geological events.
(ex: the plague of hail; the ground opening and swallowing Korah)
Causing nature to run amuck.
(ex: the plagues of frogs, locusts, & gnats; the attack of deadly serpents in Israel’s camp; wild lions devouring people in Samaria; the plague of rats on the Philistines after they stole the Ark)
Causing animals to attack individuals.
(ex: the lion that killed a disobedient prophet but left his donkey unharmed)
The sudden destruction of large manmade structures.
(ex: the fall of Jericho; the collapse of the Philistine temple; the fall of the Philistine idol Dagon).
Using human armies to inflict shocking carnage on a massive scale
(ex: the cutting open of pregnant women, the beating of children on rocks, the mass slaughter of men during the fall of Jerusalem)
The degradation of humans.
(ex: the mass rape of women & driving the Jews to cannibalism during the final siege of Jerusalem)
The mass slaughter of children.
(ex: the plague on the firstborn)
The mass slaughter of animals.
(ex: the plague on the livestock)
Do any of these things sound familiar? We read about similar events happening in the news all the time. When scores of children get gunned down by a psychopath in their classroom, what is your first response? Do you wonder where God is and how He could have let such a terrible thing happen? Such questions flatly deny God’s sovereignty. You aren’t getting any points with God by pretending He has nothing to do with shocking and terrible events. When you read about a tree collapsing on a little girl at the exact moment she is walking under it; when you read about a plane crash killing hundreds; when you read about terrorists mass torturing and slaughtering people, don’t be asking “Where’s God?” Open your eyes and see that God is right in the middle of all of these things: causing them to happen for very good reasons.
Now there’s a widespread delusion in the Church that if God ever does something bad to someone, He must be angry at them. No, this is wrong. God wasn’t angry at the unborn children of Israel when He arranged for their pregnant mothers to be run through by swords. God wasn’t angry at men like Daniel and Ezekiel when He trashed their homeland. We have to be very careful when we are interpreting violent acts in the news. Most of the time, God isn’t going to give us specific explanations about why He does what He does. When a tornado flattens a community of people, was God trying to punish those people or was He really going after other people who He knew would be devastated by the loss of that town? Death is only a terrible punishment if we are going to end up in Hell. For Christians, it’s a reward to die—it only devastates those we leave behind. So who is God trying to reach when He causes mass destruction? There is no simple answer. God is a multitasker. He’s always working several angles at once.
The worm mentality is a highly addictive mentality because it is driven by a very ego-pleasing assumption that we are supreme at something—in this case, supreme at being hideous. All humans want to think they are good at something. In the worm mentality, we claim to excel in being heinous. Of course having humans reject us is just stage one. The ultimate victory is to believe that we have succeeded in overwhelming God Himself. For the unsaved soul, the ultimate accomplishment is to believe that God has eternally rejected us because even with all of His God powers, He simply can’t bear to be in our ultra-evil presence. For the Christian, the ultimate victory is to believe that we have succeeded in getting God to turn away from us—even to revoke our salvation. Again, the logic stream is that we’re so awesome at being hideous that even God finds Himself hopelessly trumped.
Now in real life, God is never threatened by His own creations, nor is He impressed by our delusions of grandeur. When God does not shut down on us and give us that ultimate form of rejection which our egos are craving, we often try to help Him along by rejecting Him first. We like to go about this in a grand, boastful way, saying things like, “I know that God finds me unbearable, so I’m going to ask Him to please throw me into Hell. After all, I wouldn’t want to corrupt His perfect Heaven with my vile self.” Notice how such thinking exalts you as the ultimate giver—the one who is voluntarily sacrificing yourself in order to protect God from further distress. This is nothing more than ego run amuck. God doesn’t need your protection, and what you’re trying to protect Him from is a threat which only exists in your own mind. You have decided that because you are so supremely vile, even your own Creator feels personally threatened by you. You tell yourself that you actually possess the power to obstruct God’s plans, wreck His Heaven, or halt His universe. My, what a powerful little thing you are. And if you weren’t so altruistic in nature—so willing to crucify yourself in order to save us all from your toxic presence, well, we’d all be lost. Once you set yourself up in this kind of ultimate savior role, you are naturally going to be opposed to truth, because truth is going to be a major pride buster and your pride is out of control.
The worm mentality is a self-destructive mentality in which you are the only one who suffers. By the time you’re done cutting yourself off from other people and from God, you end up alone, bitter, and empty. You see, the truth is that you have deep core needs which only God can satisfy. The whole notion that you can ever cut ties with Him is as absurd as claiming you can get through a day without breathing. You really don’t get to call how the universe runs because you are not in control. You will never be in control, and God will never be impressed with your vileness. To God, you’re not worse than anyone else, you’re just caught up in a superiority complex that is driven by an intense fear of being average and forgettable. Well, God offers you something better than being ultra-vile. He says that you are very special to Him and that you matter to Him. He doesn’t say you’re ultimate—He says that He is ultimate, and you are an insignificant speck by comparison. But you’re His speck, and He made you for the purpose of forming a positive, personal relationship with you. In order for that relationship to get off the ground, you’re going to need to stop trying to dominate Him and you’re going to have to open yourself up to accepting a different value system. Right now you’re defining your worth by how hideous you are. It’s your great vileness that makes you have value in your eyes. When we fear that we don’t have a chance at competing in positive areas, we turn to negative ones. At bottom, we just want to excel at something. Well, God makes succeeding with Him very easy because He isn’t comparing you to other people. You don’t have to be super scum or super good to hold onto His love. He loves you because He wants to—it has nothing to do with you impressing Him. God says that if you will submit to His Authority in your life and ask Him to make you all that He wants you to be, He will break you out of this self-destructive path you’re on and teach you a much better way to live. But first you have to decide that you want to be healed, because it’s not God’s usual style to force cures on people. He gives us the option of wallowing in egotistical delusions and deciding that we are having a far greater impact on Him than we really are. How anticlimactic would it be to live your life thinking you’re ultra evil, only to get to Heaven and have God say, “Why didn’t you ever listen to Me on earth? We could be a lot closer than we are right now.” God doesn’t find you threatening in the slightest. He sees you more like a little child who is refusing to pay attention in school, therefore you’re not learning the basics of reading and writing. Certainly immaturity has its appeal, because growing up requires a lot of work and some pride grinding adjustments. But choosing to grow up is the far more rewarding choice in the long run, and the only one that will truly satisfy your soul.